Manually configure Outlook 2010 for Exchange Online (BPOS)

Manually configure Outlook 2010 for Exchange Online (BPOS)

I live in Outlook, I think most people probably do too, so having recently moved the email for my domain over to something a little more reliable – BPOS – I thought it’d be nice to have access to that inbox through my Outlook, in addition to my Microsoft email. To help with the setup of email the Sign In application can do it all for you the client’s available from the Administration Center or the download site.

This however results in you having a separate profile within Outlook so it’s not quite what I wanted.

This is what you need to do to add an Exchange Online mailbox to an existing Outlook profile in Outlook 2010 (the basic steps are universal):

Close Outlook

Open Mail32 (32-bit") from Control Panel

Click E-mail Accounts… and then New…

Select E-mail Account and click Next on the wizard

Select Manually configure server settings or additional server types and Next again

Select Microsoft Exchange or compatible service and Next again

Now fire up your browser of choice, IE nach, and log into your Outlook Web Apps.

Look in the top right and you’ll see Options, then select About and copy the name next to Mailbox server name

Go back to the mail settings dialogue and paste the name of your Exchange Online server in Server and your full Exchange Online email address in User Name

Click the More Settings… button in the lower right and select the Connection tab, tick Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP and click Exchange Proxy Settings…

Next you’ll need the address of the mobile device URL for your region which you’ll enter in the first field, then click OK a couple of times to get back to the wizard

Done, if you start Outlook you’ll find your new account is available for you

Cannot open your default e-mail folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your folders with your Outlook data file (.ost).

Bill C.

1 Dec 2010 3:20 AM

This is indicative of the NTLM auth in Exchange Proxy settings, which is usually changed for connections to premise Exchange 2007 / 2010 mailbox servers. I tried using Basic Auth and could not get name resolution to the BPOS server, so I stick with NTLM and it works (in the settings dialog) but not when launching Outlook to create a new profile. I have tried both a new profile and adding BPOS to an existing Outlook 2010 profile that has an existing Exchange 2010 server connection (which is my goal). With a new/empty profile for BPOS, I get the error above immediately upon launching Outlook. For the profile where I have an existing Exchange 2010, various POP3/IMAP accounts, I add it successfully and the profile launches no problem, but as soon as try to expand the BPOS tree, error pops on unable to open default e-mail folders.

Any suggestions would be awesome! This article/post seems to be replicated around the internet but no mention of my default e-mail folder issue. :(

So are you able to get into BPOS using the Single Signon Tool - which is the only supported way?

Also I've since encountered a problem in that if Outlook goes Offline for any reason with the above in place it's impossible to get back online, so if you're on a laptop you might not want to do this...

Joanna

13 Dec 2010 9:20 AM

Hi, I've found on youtube a video about an Add-on for an easy Oulook configuration. It's called CodeTwo Outlook AutoConfig:

Interesting, I've emailed them to ask them. If they come back to me I'll post it here

Erik

29 Dec 2010 1:09 AM

This worked for me however need to test it out further to confirm. Thanks

Dharmen

5 Feb 2011 7:13 PM

I tried this but it is giving me error message "An unknown error occurred, error code: 0x80070057." Can you help me with this? my email is dgpusa@msn.com.

Thank you

Cmac

11 Feb 2011 8:07 PM

I tried and got the error: "the proxy server you have specified is invalid". I'm running Outlook 2010, BPOS/Exchange Online, and I can't get the Microsoft Online Services Sign In to configure Outlook...

Had an issue where the Sign in tool had no option to configure outlook 2010 even went into options, advanced reconfgure still no option to configure Outlook, brand new version never set up before with email so only option was to configure manually